This I Believe

I know that I promised to regale you of tales of my encounter with Humbert Humbert, but you will have to continue to wait in anticipation for that story. This was my first week back at school with students (we started Thursday), and I feel pretty good about this year. I am vastly more organized and better prepared for this year, since it is my second rather than my first. In order to get to know my students, I am assigning them a personal essay assignment. For my AP Lit students, I gave the hardest task: to write a This I Believe essay. For those of you who are unfamiliar, This I Believe was started in the '50s by Edward R Murrow, who commented that “Never has the need for personal philosophies of this kind been so urgent.” What it consists of is people sending in personal credos of around 400-500 words. They often begin with a concise statement of belief, such as "I believe you should be nice to the pizza delivery dude," or "I believe everyone deserves flowers on their grave." Believing that this was needed for the current day as well, NPR recently resurrected this project and is continuing to receive and broadcast essays from people of all walks of life.

Anyways, it is a daunting task to try to summarize your personal credo in so few words, so I thought it only right that I attempt it myself. Since my essay drew on the same poem that gave title to this blog, I thought it fitting that I share it here. Hope you enjoy!

I believe that Truth lies just beyond the pebble of quartz.

I find in my musings I often return to one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost’s “For Once, Then, Something.” In the poem, the speaker is kneeling at a well-curb, gazing into the depths of the water. At first, he sees only his reflection, but one time the speaker peers “beyond the picture” to catch a glimpse of “something white, uncertain, something more of the depths.” But then he loses it. The poem concludes with the speaker pondering what that whiteness was: “Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.” I have always loved that line for the sheer magnitude of it, for its incomparable breadth. In it the pendulum swings from the most abstract, Truth, to the most concrete, a pebble of quartz. Within this span I find the entirety of human experience in looking for elusive Truth.

At times in my own personal journey I’ve searched and found nothing but a pebble of quartz. Looking for the sublime, I could find only the banal. I remember once spending an afternoon with my aunt Marilyn at the Saint Louis Zoo, my aunt the missionary—who had sold her possessions to give to the poor and to be free to travel to unpronounceable countries ending in –ezekistan to carry her care for the unreached and unloved to the corners of the earth. She marveled at the intricacies of the natural world and wondered how anyone could behold such sights and wonders and not believe in God. She spoke as Moses would have descending from Mount Sinai, face glowing with the radiation of God’s truth, and in response I could offer nothing but silence. I could see how people could not believe, how it was more probable that such things could arise from nature through evolution than having been created by some unseen and all-powerful God. I searched the well, but could only identify that uncertain whiteness as an ordinary, bland, sliver of uninspiring quartz.

Yet, despite my doubts I cannot escape belief. I cannot wander. I stay affixed to the well-curb, peering into those depths, and in pursuing I’ve glimpsed more than the rough edges of pebbles and perhaps even stumbled upon Truth. Though reason pulls me toward the concrete, intuition, which holds a stronger sway, leads me on. And so I believe that if you ask, Truth will be given to you; search, and you shall find Truth. Although you may need to kneel often at the well-curb, Truth stands knocking at the door, waiting for you to open it.